EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE
This year we will help 16,000 people with food for over 270,000 meals, provided 14,000 free clothing
items, 1,800 emergency bus passes, 500 voice mail boxes and hundreds of blankets, diapers and personal hygiene items. We help hundreds more people over the phone with referrals, ideas and helping them with a gameplan to address their situation.
We also act as an information source for other organizations to help them assist their own clients and our community resource materials are used by agencies throughout the county. We
can provide funds for medications, and bus passes for temporary transportation
related to employment or medical needs. We are the designated partner
to provide clothing and other items for Shasta County Women's Refuge and
Empire Recovery clients.

HOMELESS SERVICESPOP serves 1,200 people who are homeless each year with food, clothing,
personal hygiene items, voice mail, referrals and emergency casework. When grant funds are available, we can provide motel shelter for those who cannot stay in other shelters due to medical reasons.

We are a member of the City of Redding
and Shasta County Homeless Continuum of Care Council working to improve
homeless services and to educate agencies and the public.

In the 1990's, POP sponsored
and supervised the Armory Winter Homeless Shelter for five years -- the only shelter allowing people to have shelter for the entire
winter.

HOMELESS AND AT-RISK COUNTY-WIDE SURVEY INFORMATION

We conduct and coordinate the ongoing homeless survey for the City of Redding Shasta Homeless Continuum of Care Council. This provides detailed information for our community to use when designing or modifying programs and for grant applications. It helps us all serve people better. Please click on the button to the left labled, "COCC Homeless Survey" to see some of the information.

FREE VOICE MAIL CENTER
Our free voice mail service, Connect Message Center, serves 500 people annually who don't have phones who are
seeking employment, who are victims of domestic violence, disaster victims, or who are homeless.

COMMUNITY GARDENSPOP has over 100 plots in our two community gardens. For
some low income families, gardening with us is the only way they can afford
to have fresh produce. They also contribute some of their produce to our
Emergency Food Bank.

COLLABORATIVE WORK THROUGH THE YEARSPeople of Progress believes strongly that working together
yields better programs and results for everyone. Over the years, we've
convened a number of productive collaboratives that addressed community
needs in many categories, among them:

The Motel Taskforce:three unsafe and unsanitary substandard
motels chose to close and two are now poised for renovation. Because of
the Taskforce's work, nobody became homeless through this process and
many families and individuals received the help they needed to move forward.
The Taskforce's work also improved living conditions for residents in
other motels and resulted in the City of Redding committing to fund a
new transitional housing facility for 16 families. POP convened
and chaired the Taskforce.

Shasta Transportation Collaborative: POP's work
led to the creation of three RABA pilot routes serving the Intermountain
area, Cottonwood and Airport Road. POP purchases then re-distributes
24,000 emergency RABA bus passes each year to agencies.

The General Assistance Taskforce: When Shasta County proposed to drastically cut the General Assistance program limiting benefits to three months per year, POP convened a citizen's and county staff taskforce whose work resulted in
the most progressive and effective adjustments in a county General Assistance
(GA) program in California. Through the Taskforce's work a job developer was added to the program and GA recipients who are disabled and waiting for a determination from the federal SSI program were allowed to continue receiving GA monthly payments until their SSI benefits were awarded.

Disaster Assistance: After the Canyon and Jones Fires, POP convened meetings
for county departments and assistance agencies to coordinate the community
response. We produced the official resource listings and press releases
right after the fire to get the most complete, targeted contact information
on resources to the public, other agencies and the media and helped coordinate
community meetings. In addition to helping fire victims directly, we ran
the multi-agency Disaster Distribution Center that distributed all furniture, household
and clothing donations from the Salvation Army, the Good News Rescue Mission
and POP.

We serve or have served on a number of collaboratives, councils, and committees:

Homeless Continuum of Care Council (Redding/Shasta County), Shasta County Public Health Advisory Board, CALWORKS Management Council, The Food Group, Social Services Committee of the Regional Transportation Agency, and various school collaboratives.